The production of corrugated flat formed bodies has been known for a long time, is in use, and employed for a wide range of uses. A main area of application is packaging technology, where corrugated components are necessary for fixing longitudinal articles such as ampules, ballpoint pens etc. Corrugated components can be produced in a continuous working process from flat formed bodies fed from the roll. The individual corrugated components must subsequently be cut to a definite length. These types of devices do not permit integration into packaging lines, however, since the production cycle for the corrugated components generally does not correspond to the filling cycle of the packaging line.
Naturally, methods and devices are also already known with which the corrugated component is not produced off the roll but from a cut sheet, in a single working step. For example, BE-A-548 274 describes a device with which two parallel corrugated components can be produced directly inside a package. The lower rows of shaping tools are, with that, brought into position with a bow shaped movement, respectively retracted again after the deformation, whilst the upper rows of prismatic shaping tools can be lowered in a vertical movement.
A considerable disadvantage of the known methods and devices is that the distance, respectively the intermediate space between the individual shaping tools of a row remains constantly the same. The distance corresponds to the dimension of the finished corrugation, which, during the deformation process, of necessity leads to a relative displacement between the facing surfaces of the shaping tools and the material sheet. The absolute length of the material sheet will be increasingly shortened with increasing deformation, which leads to friction on the deformation tools. The more corrugations lying next to one another, and the higher the corrugations, the greater the shortening and the friction between the tool and the work piece will evidently be. The possibilities for application of the devices known up to now were, for this reason, extremely limited.
For the production of corrugated sheet metal, methods and devices are already known with which friction between the tool and the work piece is avoided. Thus, FR-A-1,259,214 shows a method with which numerous corrugations are simultaneously formed in a sheet, whilst the shaping tools are pressed against one another and simultaneously pushed up together. The device described is, however, not suitable for the deformation of small material sheets within a packaging line.